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form no conception beforehand; after he has said it I can maybe understand it, maybe in a certain sense can understand Abraham in what he says, though without getting any closer to him than I have been in the foregoing discussion. In case no last rejoinder of Socrates had existed, I should have been able to think myself into him and formulate such a word; if I were unable to do it, a poet could, but no poet can catch up with Abraham.
Before I go on to consider Abraham's last word more closely I would call attention to the difficulty Abraham had in saying anything at all. The distress and anguish in paradox
consisted (as was set forth above) in silence - Abraham cannot speak. * So in view of this fact it is a contradiction to require him to speak, unless one would have him out of the paradox again , in such a sense that at the last moment he suspends it, whereby he ceases to be Abraham and annuls all that went before. So then if Abraham at the last moment were to say to Isaac, "To thee it applies," this would only have been a weakness. For if he could speak at all, he ought to have spoken long before, and the weakness in this case would consist in the fact that he did not possess the maturity of spirit and the concentration to think in advance the whole pain but had thrust something away from him, so that the actual pain contained a plus over and above the thought pain. Moreover, by such a speech he would fall out of the role of the paradox, and ifhe really wanted to speak to Isaac, he must transform his situation into a temptation [AnJechtung] , for otherwise he could say nothing, and if he were to do that, then he is not even so much as a tragic hero.
However, a last word of Abraham has been preserved, and in so far as I can understand the paradox I can also apprehend the total presence of Abraham in this word . First and foremost, he does not say anything, and it is in this form he says what he h as to say. His reply to Isaac has the form of irony, for it always is irony when I say something and do not say anything. Isaac
*If there can be any question of an analogy, the circumstance of the death of Pythagoras furnishes it, for the silence which he had always maintained he had to carry through in his last momen t, and therefore [being compelled to speak 1
he said, " I t is better to be put to death than to speak" (cf. Diogenes Laertius, viii. 39).
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interrogates Abraham o n the supposition that Abraham knows.
So then if Abraham were to have replied, " I know nothing," he would have uttered an untruth. He cannot say anything, for what he knows he cannot say. So he replies, "God will provide Himself the iamb for the burnt offering, my son. " Here the double movement in Abraham's sou! is evident, as it was described in the foregoing discussion. If A braham had merely renounced his claim to Isaac and had done no more, he would in this last word be saying an untruth, for he knows that God demands Isaac as a sacrifice, and he knows that he himself at that instant precisely is ready to sacrifice him. We see then that after making this movement he made every instant the next movement, the movement of faith by virtue of the absurd .
Because of this he utters no falsehood , for in virtue of the absurd it is of course possible that God could do something entirely different. Hence he is speaking no untruth, but neither is he saying anything, for he speaks a foreign language. This becomes still more evident when we consider that it was Abraham himself who must perform the sacrifice of Isaac. Had the task been a different one, had the Lord
Abraham to bring Isaac
out to Mount Moriah and then would Himself have Isaac struck by lightning and ill this way receive him as a sacrifice, then, taking his words in a plain sense, Abraham might have been right in speaking enigmatically as he did , for he could not himself know what would occur. But in the way the task was prescribed to Abraham he himself had to act, and at the decisive moment he must know what he himself would do, he must know that Isaac will be sacrificed . In case he did not know this definitely, then he has not made the infinite movement of resignation, then, though his word is not indeed an untruth, he is very far from being Abraham, he has less significance tha n the tragic hero, yea, he is an irresolute man who is unabJe to resolve either on one thing or another, and for this reason will always be uttering riddles. But such a hesitator is a sheer parody of a knight of faith.
Here again it appears that one may have an understanding of Abraham, but can understand him only in the same way as one understands the paradox. For my part I can in a way understand Abraham, but at the same time I apprehend that I have P R O BLE M I I I
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not the courage to speak, and still less to act as he did - but by this I do not by any means intend to say that what he did was insignificant, for on the contrary it is the one only marvel.
And what did the contemporary age think of the tragic hero?
They thought that he was great, and they admired him. And that honorable assembly of nobles, the jury which every generation impanels to pass j udgment upon the foregoing generation, passed the same judgment upon him. But as for Abraham there was no one who could understand him. And yet think what he attained! He remained true to his love. But he who loves God has no need of tears, no need of admira tion, in his love he forgets his suffering, yea, so completely has he forgotten it that afterwards there would not even be the least inkling of his pain if God Himself did not recall it, for God sees in secret and knows the distress and counts the tears and forgets nothing.
So either there is a paradox, that the individual as the individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolu te/or Abraham is lost.
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One time i n Holland when the market was rather dull for spices the merchants had several cargoes dumped into the sea to peg up prices. This was a pardonable, perhaps a necessary device for deluding people. Is it something like that we need now in the world of spirit? Are we so thoroughly convinced that we have attained the highest point that there is nothing left for us but to make ourselves believe piously that we have not got so far j ust
�
for the sake of having something left to occupy our time? Is it such a self-deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself?
Or rather is not the thing most needed an honest seriousness which dauntlessly and incorruptibly points to the tasks, an honest seriousness which lovingly watches over the tasks, which does not frighten men into being over hasty in getting the highest tasks accomplished, but keeps the tasks young and beautiful and charming to look upon and yet difficult withal and appealing to noble minds. For the enthusiasm of noble natures is aroused only by difficulties. Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing. In this respect every generation begins primitively, has no different task from that of every previous generation, nor does it get further, except in so far as the preceding generation shirked its task and deluded itself. This authentically human factor is passion, in which also the one generation perfectly understands the other and understands itself. Thus no generation has learned from another to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the preceding generation, and if here one is not willing like the previous generations to stop with love but would go further, this is but idle and foolish talk.
But the highest passion in a man is faith, and here no generation begins at any other point than did the preceding 1 08
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generation, every generation begins all over again, the subsequent generation gets no further than the foregoing - i n so far as this remained faithful to its task and did not leave it i n the lurch. That this should be wearisome is of course something the generation cannot say, for the generation has in fact the task to perform and has nothing to do with the consideration that the foregoing generation had the same task - unless the particular generation or the particular individuals within it were presumptuous enough to assume the place which belongs by right only to the Spirit which governs the world and has patience enough not to grow weary. If the generation begins that sort of thing, it is upside down, and what wonder then that the whole of existence seems to it upside down, for there surely is no one who has found the world so upside down as did the tailor in the fairy tale97 who went up in his lifetime to heaven and from that standpoint contemplated the world. If the generation would only concern itself about its task, which is the highest thing it can do, it cannot grow weary, for the task is always sufficient for a human life.
When the children on a holiday have already got through playing all their games before the clock strikes twelve and say impatiently, "Is there nobody can think of a new game?" does this prove that these children are more developed and more advanced than the children of the same generation or of a previous one who could stretch out the familiar games, to last the whole day long? Or does i t not prove rather that these children lack what I would call the lovable seriousness which belongs essentially to play?
Faith is the highest passion in a man. There are perhaps many in every generation who do not even reach it, but no one gets further. Whether there be many in our age who do not discover it, I will not decide, I dare only appeal to myself as a witness who makes no secret that the prospects for him are not the best, without for all that wanting to delude himself and to betray the great thing which is faith by reducing it to an insignificance, to an ailment of childhood which one must wish to get over as soon as possible. But for the man also who does not so much as reach faith life has tasks enough, and if one loves them sincerely, life will by no means be wasted , even though it never is comparable to the life of those who sensed and grasped the highest. But he
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who reached faith (it makes no difference whether h e b e a man of distinguished talents or a simple man) does not remain standing at faith, yea, he would be offended if anyone were to say this of him, just as the lover would be indignant if one said that he remained standing at love, for he would reply, "I do not remain standing by any means, my whole life is in this . "
Nevertheless he does not get further, does n o t reach anything different, for if he discovers this, he has a different explanation for it.
"One must go further, one must go further." This impulse to go further is an ancient thing in the world. H eraclitus the obscure, who deposited his thoughts in his writings and his writings in the Temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armor during his life, and therefore he hung them up in the temple of the goddess) ,98 Heraclitus the obscure said, "One cannot pass twice through the same stream. " * Heraclitus the obscure had a disciple who did not stop with that, he went further and added, "One cannot do it even once."t Poor Heraclitus, to have such a disciple! By this amendment the thesis of Heraclitus was so improved that it became an Eleatic thesis which denies movement, and yet that disciple desired only to be a disciple of Heraclitus . . . and to go further - not back to the position Heraclitus had abandoned .
• Plato's Cratyllus, §402 .
ter. Tennemann, Cleschichte der Philcsophie, J , p. 2 20.
O N A U T H O R I T Y A N D R E V E L AT I O N
T H E B O O K O N A D L E R
o r A C Y C L E O F E T H I C O - R E LI G I O U S E S S AY S
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1 8 4 6 .
Since, as says the barber (and one who has n o opportunity of keeping abreast of the age by the aid of newspapers may well rest satisfied with the barber, who in olden times when there were as yet no newspapers was what the newspapers are now: universal intelligence, "our age is the age of movement," it is not improbable that the lives of many men go on in such a way that they have indeed premises for living but reach no conclusions -
quite like this stirring age which has set in movement many premises but also has reached no conclusion. Such a man's life goes on till death comes and puts an end to life, but without bringing with it an end in the sense of a conclusion. For i t is one thing that a life is over, and a different thing that a life is finished by reaching its conclusion. In the degree that such a man has talents he can go ahead and become an author, as he understands it. But such an understanding is an illusion. For that matter (since here we may hypothetically admit everything possible, so long as we hold fast the decisive point) , he may have extraordinary talents and remarkable learning, but an author he is not, in spite of the fact that he produces books. Like his life, his book must be material. Perhaps this material may be worth its weight in gold, but it is only material. Here is no poet who poetically rounds out the thing as a whole, no psychologist who organizes the individual trait and the individual person within a total apprehension, no dialectician who prescribes the place within the life-view which he has at his disposition. No, in spite of the fact that the man writes, he is not essentially an author; he will be capable of writing the first part, but he cannot write the second part, or ( to avoid any misunderstanding) he can write the first and also the second part, but he cannot write the third part - the last part he cannot write. Ifhe goes ahead naively (led astray by the reflection that every book must have a last part) and so writes the last part, he will make it thoroughly clear by writing the last part that he makes a written renunciation to all claim to be an author. For though it is indeed by writing that 1 1 3
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one justifies the claim t o b e an author, it i s also, strangely enough, by writing that one virtually renounces this claim. I f he had been thoroughly aware of the inappropriateness of the third part - well, one may say, si
philosophus mansiHet.
To find the conclusion, it is necessary first of all to observe that it is lacking, and then in turn to feel quite vividly the lack of it. I t might therefore b e imagined that a n essential author, just to make evident the misfortune that men are living without a conclusion, might write a fragment (but by calling it that he would avoid all misapprehension) , though in another sense he provided the conclusion by providing the necessary life-view.
And after all a world-view, a life-view, is the only true condition of every literary production. Every poetic conclusion is an illusion . If a life-view is developed, if it stands out whole and clear in its necessary coherence, one has no need to put the hero to death, one may as well let him live: the premise is nevertheless resolved and satisfied in the conclusion, the development is complete. But if there is lacking a life-view (which of course must be in the first part and everywhere, though the lack of it only becomes evident in the second part or the third, that is to say, the conclusion) , it is of no avail to let the hero die, no, it avails nothing that the writer, to make quite sure that he is dead, even has him buried in the course of the story - with this the development is by no means complete. If death had that power, nothing would be easier than to be a poet, and poetry would not be needed at all. For in reality it is indeed true that every man dies, his life comes to an end; but from this it does not follow that his life has an end in the sense of a conclusion, " that it came to an end " - precisely this past tense shows that death is not the decisive thing, that the conclusion may fall within a man's lifetime, and that to regard death as a conclusion is a deceitful evasion, for death is related quite indifferently to the premise of a man's life, and therefore is not a conclusion of any sort.
But the more the time for development is lacking, and the more individuals there are who lack a conclusion, all the more active men seem to be in multiplying premises. This in turn has the result that to get a conclusion becomes more and more difficult, because, instead of the decisiveness of the conclusion , there results a stoppage which, spiritually understood, i s what
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constipation is i n the animal organism, while the augmentation of premises is just as dangerous as overloading oneself wi th food when one suffers from constipation, though for a moment it may seem an alleviation. Gradually the movement of time changes i t into an unhealthy fermentation. So t h e individuals whose life contains only premises may make use of this sickness of our age by becoming authors, and their productions will be precisely what the age demands. Under these circumstances an essential author would naturally prescribe a diet, but the premise-authors are better off.
As opportunity makes thieves, so does this fermentation make
' mad' authors (in the sense that we speak of ' mad money' in times of serious inflation) , for the lack of a conclusion in our age obscures the fact that the au thors lack it. The relative differences of premise-authors among themselves, with respect to talents and such like, may be very great, but they have in common this essential mark, that they are not real authors. On the surface of such a fermentation there may be floating many clever pates, but even the most insignificant pates may aspire to writing at least a little premise-contribution for a newspaper. In this way there is prospect of advancement for the most insignificant pates, and consequently there is a great
a multitude of
authors, so that by reason of their number they may best be likened to sulphur-matches which are sold in bundles. Such an author, upon whose head is deposited something phosphorescent ( the suggestion of a project, a hint) , one takes up by the legs and strikes him upon a newspaper, and out there come three to four columns. And the premise-authors have really a striking resemblance to sulphur-matches - both explode with a puff.
But in spite of this explosion, or perhaps precisely because of it, all premise-authors, whatever their relative differences may be, have one thing in common: they all have a purpose, they all wish to produce an effect, they all wish that their works may have an extraordinary diffusion and may be read if possible by all mankind. This curious trait is reserved for men in such an age of fermentation: to have a purpose, for the sake of this purpose to be OIl the move in the sweat of their brow, and not really to know in themselves whither this purpose tends; for knowing that, one must also have the conclusion. This, as the proverb says, is to see
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that a town i s called Little Run, but not t o know whither it is running. Instead of having, each man for himself, a clear conception of what one wills in concreto before one begins to express one's views, one has a superstitious notion about the utility of starting a discussion, one has the superstition that, while the individuals themselves do not know what they will, the spirit of the age should be able by its dialectic to make it clear what one really wills, so that by this these purposeful gentlemen may get to know what their purpose really is. Everyone in his own way is busily engaged in kindling the fire under the boiler with these combustible premises - but nobody seems to think how dangerous this is with no engineer at hand.
The premise-author is easily recognized and easily described, if only one will remember that he is the exact opposite to the essential author, that while the former is outwardly directed, the latter is inwardly directed. Now it may be a social problem. The premise-author has absolutely no precise and clear notion of what is to be done, how the pressure can be relieved . He thinks thus: "If only an outcry is raised, then surely it will turn out all right." Now it may be a religious problem. The premise-writer has neither time nor patience to think it out more precisely. His notion is: "If only an outcry is raised in a loud voice that can be heard all over the land, and it is read by everybody and is talked about in every company, then surely it will turn out all right."
The premise-author thinks that the outcry is like a wishing rod -
and he has not observed that almost all have become outcriers.
I t quite escapes the attention of the premise-authors that it would after all be more reasonable in our age, the age of outcry, if a man were to think thus: The outcry will certainly be made anyway, therefore it would be better for me to abstain from it and collect myself for a more concrete reflection. One smiles at reading all the romantic tales of a bygone age about how knights fared forth into the forest and killed dragons and liberated princes from enchantment, etc. - the romantic notion that in the forests such monsters dwelt, along with enchanted princes. And yet it is quite as romantic that in a whole generation everyone believes in the power of outcry to summon such monstrous forces. The apparent modesty of wanting merely to make an outcry or to raise a discussion does not seem praiseworthy at all, I N T R O D U C T I O N
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seeing that experience again and again repeated must impress upon everyone the serious thought that he must look for real help in answer to his cry, or else refrain from doing anything to increase the confusion.
Premise-authors are the opposite of the essential authors, for the latter has his own perspective, he constantly comes behind himself in his individual productions; he strives forward indeed, but within the totality, not after it; he never raises more doubt than he can explain; his A is always greater than his B; he never makes a move on an uncertainty. For he has a definite world-view and life-view which he follows, and with this he is in advance of his individual literary productions, as the whole is always before the parts. Be it much or little he has hitherto understood by his world-view, he explains only what he has understood; he does not wait superstitiously for something from the outside to turn up suddenly and bring him to an understanding, instruct him suddenly what he really wills. In real life it may make a comic effect when a man pretends to be another whose name he doesn ' t know and only learns later what he i s called. Scribe h a s used this situation wittily in a passage in one of his plays. A young man introduces himself to a family, claiming to be a cousin who has been away for many years. He doesn't himself know what the cousin's name was, till an overdue bill made out to this cousin was presented to him and helped him out of his embarrassment. He takes the bill, and in an aside which is fairly witty he says, "I t may always be well to know what my name is." Thus the premiseauthor, too, produces a comical effect by pretending to be somebody other than he is, by pretending to be an author, and in the end he must wait for something from outside to enlighten him as to what he really is, that is, spiritually understood, what he really wills. The essential author on the other hand knows definitely what he is, what he wills; from first to last he is attentive to understand himself in his life-view; he does not fail to observe that the expectation of an extraordinary result from a discussion he has started is skepticism, that the supposed reliability of the result really nourishes doubt.
In so far as an essential author may be said to feel a need to communicate himself, this need is purely immanent, an enjoyment of his understanding raised to the second power, or else for
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him it would be an ethical task consciously assumed . The premise-author feels no need to communicate himself, for essentially he has nothing to communicate: he lacks precisely the essential thing, the conclusion, the meaning in relation to the premises. He does not feel the need to communicate himself, he is a needy person, and like other needy persons he is a burden to the state and to the poor fund -- thus essentially are all premiseauthors needy persons who become a burden to the race for the fact that they want to be supported, instead of laboring themselves and nourishing themselves with the understanding they themselves earn. There can be no reason in existence unless every man may be assumed to have as much understanding as he needs, if he will honestly labor. If he has great talen ts and can also raise many doubts, so also he must have powers in himself to gain understanding, if he seriously wills it. But everyone should keep silent in so far as he has no understanding to communicate.
Merely to want to raise an outcry is a sort of glittering idleness. I t i s easy to d o that, i t is easy enough to make oneself seem important thereby; it is easy enough to get on the poor list, and then it is easy enough to cry out to the state, "Support me." And every premise-writer cries out to the state, " Support me." But divine governance answers, "Thou shalt support thyself, and so must every man." Then the apparent modesty of merely prompting a discussion is seen to be a hidden presumption; for if the person in question is not capable of being an essential author, it is presumptuous to pretend to be an author. The essen tial author is essentially a teacher; and, if he is not and essentially could not be a real author, he is essentially a learner. I nstead of being nourishing, as every essential author is ( the difference being only with respect to talents and compass) , every premise-author is devouring. He is devouring precisely because, instead of keeping silence, he utters doubts and makes an outcry.
The art of all communication consists in coming as close as possible to reality, i.e. to contemporaries who are in the position of readers, and yet at the same time to have a viewpoint, to preserve the comforting and endless distance of ideality. Allow me to illustrate this by an example from an earlier literary production . In the psychological experiment "Guilty? /not guilty?" (in Stages upon Life's Way) there is depicted one who is
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taxed to the utmost, even to the point of despair, by the mortal danger threatening his spiritual life, and the whole thing is depicted as though it might have happened yesterday. In this respect the production is brought as close as possible to reality; but now comes the comforting reflection that the whole thing is an experiment, spiritually understood, he is what in civil life would be called a very dangerous person; such a person as ordinarily is not allowed to go out alone and is usually accompanied by a couple of policemen for the sake of public security.
So it is too in this production that to assure public safety there is included an experimenter (he calls himself a policeman) who very quietly shows how the whole thing hangs together, theoretically develops a life-view, which he completes and rounds out, while he illustrates it by pointing to the subject, in order to indicate the movements he makes in proportion as the noose is tightened. If this were not a mere experiment, if there were no experimenter at hand, no life-view developed - then such a literary production, whether or no it displayed talent, would be simply consuming. It would be agonizing to come in contact with it, because it merely made the impression of a real man who presumably the next instant might go mad. It is one thing to depict a passionate man when with him is depicted a Gewaltiger and a life-view which can control him, and it is quite a different thing when a passionate man with the highest degree of personal reality becomes an author, runs amuck, and by the help of a book assaults us as it were with his doubts and torments.
If one would depict a man who thought he had had a revelation but later became insecure about it, and if one did this as an experiment, and if there was at hand an experimenter who understood his business thoroughly, and if a whole life-view was developed which made use of the subject of the experiment as a physicist might do - then that would be all right, perhaps much might be learned from the report of it. Perhaps the experimenter had assured himself by observation that such a thing might happen in his generation, and hence brought the experiment as close as possible to this age - but nota bene that he himself was in possession of the explanation which would be communicated .
When on the contrary a real man in the perplexed condition of the subject of this experiment precipitates himself upon the public 1 20
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- then he is consuming in the highest degree. The abnormal man may be instructive when he is controlled and forced to take his place in a total life-view; but when he bluntly claims the authority of a teacher without being able to teach anything else but abnormality and its pain, one is painfully affected by the importunate reality of such an ex-author, who personally is in mortal danger and quite personally wants to claim our aid, or by the fact that he knows no way of escape, wants to make us uneasy, to make us suffer as he does. It is one thing to be a physician who knows all about cures and healing, upon which he lectures in his clinic where he recounts the history of a disease - it is one thing to be a physician beside a sickbed, and another thing to be a sick man who leaps out of his bed by becoming an author, communicating bluntly the symptoms of his disease. Perhaps he may be able to express and expound the symptoms of his illness in far more glowing colors than does the physician when he describes them; for the fact that he knows no resource, no salvation, gives him a peculiar passionate elasticity in comparison with the consoling talk of the physician who knows what expedients to use.
But in spite of that there remains the decisive q ualitative difference between a sick man and a physician. And this difference is precisely the same decisive qualitative difference between being a premise-author and an essential author.
What here is said about premise-authors in a way so general that it may apply to perfectly insignificant pates and to superior talents as well, if they lack a definite life-view and lack a conclusion, has an application also to Magister Adler, an author against whom I am not conscious of any animosity, since in all honesty I even owe him thanks for the service he has rendered the pseudonymous authors whose natural protector I am, for the fact that he has hardly made any reference to them - at least he has not showed it in such a way that in quoting them and other such writers he has brought them into any intimate and annoying relationship with himself. And not only for this do I owe him thanks, but also in many ways as a reader. For it is certain that in his books there are many passages which one who is welldisposed cannot read without edification, that sometimes he is moving, not rarely entertaining by his liveliness, and does not I N T R O D U C T I O N
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altogether lack profundity, though he entirely lacks consistency in his thought. Magister Adler is equipped with many happy gifts, with many desirable presuppositions with respect to learning, and along with these he has one premise more which distinguishes him absolutely from all other premise-authors: he has a fact of revelation to which he can appeal. Far from me truly is every foolish jest. I shall certainly think of this claim with every possible concession and reserve; I do not presume to deny it or to affirm it. I regard myself simply as a learner. This at least is certain , that had he held fast to this fact of revelation as an unshakable fact, though others might consider him mad or else bow to his authority - had he done that, had he not indecisively, waveringly, higgled about it and privately interpreted it away, I would not have been justified in calling him a premise-author.
But to press such a fact upon the attention of the public, and then in the end not to know himself what is what, what he himself means by it - that is to characterize himself as a premise-author, for that is to bluster in the most frightfully loud tones - and then to wait for the world to come to his assistance with the explanation that he had had a revelation, or had not had it. Such a phenomenon may have profound significance as a bitter epigram upon our age. In a wavering, doubtful and unstable age, where the individual is accustomed to seek outside himself (in the world about him, in common opinion, in town gossip) what essentially is only to be found in the decision of the individual himself - in such an age a man steps forward and appeals to a revelation, or rather he bolts out like a terrified man, with fright and fear depicted upon his countenance, still trembling from the i mpression of that moment, and announces that he has been favored by a revelation. Pro dii immortales, here then at last there must be help, here at last there must be firm ground to stand upon! Alas, he resembles this age only too thoroughly - the next instant he does not himself know definitely what is what, he leaves that unresolved - and meanwhile he writes big and ( perhaps) clever books. Lo, in those remote times when a man was honored by high revelations he retired for three years, so that he might not be taken by surprise, so that he might comprehend himself in this incomprehensible experience before teaching others. Nowadays one takes for a revelation any sort of strong impression, and the
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same evening puts it in the newspaper. Any strong impression -
indeed, to all eternity I should not regard myself as justified in saying that about the lowliest man who appealed to a revelation, if he himself stood firmly by what he had said; but Adler's conduct has justified me in saying what he himself says in his latest works. Nevertheless, Magister Adler stands or falls with his fact of revelation, he may write folios, and even though they were richer in ideas and happy thoughts and many a profound hint than are the last books, an answer is nevertheless due as to what is what, whether the whole thing was a prank - or whether in that case he will say that he repents it, since at one time he obtruded upon us its reality - or whether it was a fact of revelation, whether he then will assume that role, while other men with becoming reverence for the person so eminently favored come forward as inquirers, each one particularly in proportion to the talents bestowed upon him, but only as a learner.
What has been briefly touched upon here and will be treated more fully in a subsequent investigation sufficiently shows that it is not my intention to appraise aesthetically or critically particular passages in Magister Adler's books, or in general to deal with his writings as a critic usually does. Usually one deals with the writings and leaves the author out. Here this cannot be done.
My whole criticism and whatever ability I may have as a critic is all within the assumption that I am an insignificant individual.
I t is Magister Adler who has put himself forward with his fact 01
revelation, and for me at least this is so decisive that I cannot forget it for an instant, nor for an instant can I regard myself as justified in using my measuring rori, and I cannot criticize revealed scriptures in the same way as I would books by men.
Magister Adler is not simply an author, by reason of his revelation he is a phenomenon, in the midst of everyday life he is a dramatic person, and there can be no question of forgetting him while dealing with his writings, which commonly would be a duty. No, in dealing with his works it is necessary to be attentive to him, to him who by his fact of revelation is placed in a position so extreme that he must either be a charlatan - or an apostle. I t will not do to carry the game so far as when one speaks of Denmark's Aristotle, though God knows he does not resemble him at all, but here in Denmark he resembles him more I N T R O D U C T I O N
1 2 3
than others do - so that at last one plays the game that one was very near having a revelation, that in this country he came nearest to being an apostle. Since he has no other legitimation, the concept veers about, and it is he that is farthest precisely because he would obtrude himself.
As a phenomenon in our age (so that as much attention is paid to our age as to Adler) shall Magister Adler be the subject of discourse in this little book. His books should not be appraised aesthetically and critically as if they were by an ordinary author; no, he shall be treated by the lowly serviceable critic with the respect due to his claim, and his writings shall be used only to see whether he understands himself in being what he gives himself out to be, and which in any serious sense he has not given any sign of wishing to revoke. Neither shall anything be said about the doctrine he expounds, as to whether it is heretical or not. All such questions must be regarded as unimportant in comparison with the qualitative decisive factor. On the contrary, the ethical accent of seriousness shall be laid if possible upon that which m ust either give him divine authority ( and in that case he must be required to make use of this authority instead of being ambiguously clever in big books) , or else it must be penitently revoked, since once he thrust himself forward by claiming it. I t shall i f possible b e emphasized with the accent o f seriousness that he has appealed to a fact of revelation.
Should anyone ask who am I who do this, here is my reply: I am a serviceable critic, a lowly person, who has only ethical justification, as every man has over against an author. In case the whole episode of Magister Adler is not to be treated as an insignificance which had best be ignored, then it is disquieting that an author presses upon us as a riddle, not what we are to understand by the fact that he had a revelation (for that he has a right to do) , but the riddle whether he himself thinks it was a revelation, or that it was just another sort of Hurrah boys. I am firmly convinced that the Apostle Paul, as can easily be seen from his writings, would not have taken it ill if anyone in a serious conversation had asked him whether he really had had a revelation; and I know that Paul with the brevity of seriousness would have expressed himself briefly and replied, "Yes. " But in case Paul ( may he forgive me for what I am about to say - it 124
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must be done to illustrate something), instead of answering briefly, were it yes or no, had entered upon a long and prolix discourse to this effect: "I see well enough now, in fact 1 already have said it, but perhaps after all revelation is too strong an expression, but something it was, something like genius it was ... "
Well, then the question would have been a different one. With geniuses 1 can hold my own fairly well. God preserve me - if it is in truth the greatest genius, then with aesthetic propriety 1
gladly express my reverence for the superior mind from whom 1 am learning; but that 1 show him religious subjection, that 1 should submit my judgment to his divine authority - no, that 1
do not do, neither does any genius require it of me. But when a man coolly wishes to explain away what was intended to be an apostolic existence into being a genius, without revoking the first claim -- then he confounds the situation terribly.
To this a critic must hold fast, as 1 shall do in this little discussion. Without praising my own wares 1 also venture to promise that he who reads attentively will find in this book illumination; for 1 am not unacquainted with my age and with what is fermenting in it, I follow along with it, though like one who sails in the same ship and yet has a separate cabin, not in the quality of anything extraordinary, as though 1 had authority, no, in the quality of an eccentric who has anything but authority. *
Here this introduction should properly end. However, 1 still wish to add a word. It is not without sorrow, not without sadness, 1 write this review; 1 would rather leave it unwritten, in had no need to fear that Magister Adler's works, which recently have been highly (and stupidly) praised in the Northern Church Times, might yet attract attention, and in such a case he must necessarily occasion great confusion in the religious field, precisely because he possesses a certain cleverness, and most men have not enough ability to distinguish inter et inter. The sad and
*The passage omitted here in 1 847 referred to the "trousers" which had been made a subject of ridicule by The Corsair. This vulgar attack was made in 1 846
and still rankled when S . K . wrote the first draft of this book. Later he proposed to abbreviate it as follows: Authority - well, yes, this might have been by the help of my trousers, for by my writings I have not attracted the attention of anybody, and, God knows it, my oid gray trousers are entirely innocent of the fact that public opinion has paid so much attention to them.
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sorrowful aspect of this, according to my conception, is due to the proportions of this land. In a little land like Denmark there naturally can be only a few who have time and opportunity to occupy themselves with the things of the intellect, and of this small number there naturally can be only some individuals who really have talents and also comprehend decisively that to them is appointed occupation with the things of the intellect as their only task. But all the more important it is that such an individual, precisely because the small proportions of our land hardly have room for a quick corrective, should check himself by the strictest discipline not to grasp at a glittering confusion instead of the truth. Magister Adler is such an individual, it is not impossible that he might attract to himself the admiration of one or another less informed person, but by this nothing is gained; just because in a little land there are so few who can judge with competence and insight, either with superior or at least with equal justification, just for this reason everyone who by talents or favor is advantageously placed ought to keep watch on himself. But even if Adler with his last works has augmented the capital fund of cleverness which in our age is in so many ways accumulating with the contribution of so many clever sayings, this is of not much avail in comparison with the confusion of all the most important concepts upon which Christianity depends.
There is also in the intellectual world a glowing sensuality, a dangerous temptation to cleverness, which precisely by the play of multiplicity conceals a total lack of clearness. And although every author has a responsibility, yet it seems that an author in a great literature like the German or the French has less responsibility because he occasions less harm by swiftly vanishing in the multitude. It seems to me that Magister Adler should take this into account. I at least have sought to make this clear to myself in the consciousness of being such an individual. It is certain that in a small literature, precisely for the reason that it is small, one can realize tasks of a special sort which could not succeed in a great one where one author supplants the other; but it is also certain that the responsibility is all the more serious. When there are many springs it is not so dangerous that one of them is muddied, but in a little land, where in every direction there is hardly more than one spring, anyone who muddies it assumes a
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high degree of responsibility. And little as I love adherents and imitators, coteries and cliques, things that again thrive best in a little land but also do irreparable harm, all the more would I be glad if there were several other individuals who, on their own account and perhaps from entirely different points of view, were laboring for the cultivation of this field. But hitherto Adler has been of no profit; there is no concept he has explained, no new categorical definition he has supplied, no old and established one he has refreshed by new dialectical sharpness. Thus in no decisive sense has he been profitable, and to me in a way he has been a hindrance; for since he belongs to the religious field, and since he confuses pro uirili, and since the proportions of this land are small, I have regarded it as my duty to interrupt my customary activity in order to correct a little bit the thinker whom I would have been more than willing to regard as my superior or as a fellow-worker - but nota bene one who was working on his own account. - Moreover, I myself understand very well how strange the whole thing looks. About an author who till now has not had many readers I write a book which presumably will not be read. As it is related of two princely personages who were very fat that they took their exercise by walking around one another, so in a little land the exercise of authors consists in walking around one another. However, I have chosen my problem in such a way, as I am accustomed to do, that in spite of the fact that it is an instant of time about which the investigation revolves, the treatment because of its more universal and ideal character will be fit to be read at all times. I have no talent nor competence to write for the instant.
C HA P T E R I
T H E H I S T O R IC A L S I T U ATI O N
Magister Adler's collision with the universal as teacher in the State
Church; a special individual who has afact of revelation.
It was in the year 1843 that Magister Adler published his Sermons, in the preface to which he announced with the utmost solemnity that he had experienced a revelation, that by this a new doctrine was communicated to him, and in the sermons themselves he distinguished (and thereby made everything definitely clear) between the discourses which were by him and those which were by the direct assistance of the Spirit. * He instructed us in the preface that the Spirit commanded him to burn everything he had formerly written. Thus he stood, or so he presented himself in the preface, as a picture of a new point of departure in the most decisive sense: behind him the conflagration, and himself saved from it with the new doctrine.
At that time, strange as it may seem now, afterwards, he was a teacher in the State-Church, he had, if one will so say, happily and well become a priest, only then occurred the event which must put him in the position of the special individual extra ordinem by having a new point of departure from God. Dear as it may be to the State, and in the religious field to the State
Church, to see, if it were so, a new generation of functionaries all equipped with talents and other abilities quite different from those of the former ones, dear as it may be to the State, and in the religious field to the State-Church, to see the most distinguished and superior talents consecrate themselves to the service of the State and the State-Church, it follows as a matteI of course that this joy has one condition, namely, that they really wish to serve the State, that within its presuppositions and
*In a sense this is confusing, inasmuch as the qualitatively heterogeneous sermons ought not to have been published together; in any case there is lacking here a d ialectic middle term of comparison as to how he understands himself in the qualitative decisive difference: of being assisted by the Spirit or being without it.
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recognIZIng them they will ex animi sententia use their glorious gifts; otherwise joy must be transformed into anxiety and disquietude for its own security, in any case into anxious sympathy for the individual or the individuals who are making their lives a failure. For the State, including the State-Church, is not selfish, not tyrannical (as the evil-minded or dissatisfied wish to think and to make others believe), it is, according to its idea, benevolent; when it accepts the service of the individual it means to do him a service by indicating to him the appropriate place for the expedient and advantageous exercise of his powers.
By the fact of his revelation, by his new doctrine, * by standing under the direct outpouring of the Spirit, Magister Adler might easily become aware of being placed as a particular or peculiar individual altogether outside the universal, altogether extra ordinem as extraordinarius. Under such circumstances to wish to be in the service of the Establishment is a self-contradiction, and to expect of the Establishment that it shall keep him in its service is
*That Magister Adler has said later in a way that there is nothing new in his doctrine does not alter the case. By his course of action he has confirmed it in the strongest and loftiest terms. It is a fact, as I learn from the printer, that he had the type remain undistributed at the press, presumably with the expectation that his Sermons might soon have a new edition. The fact that he says later irresponsibly that there is nothing new, as well as the fact that he, who by his course of action evidently aimed at a sensation, later tried to give as it were a certain humoristic turn to the matter - such behavior surely might give a newspaper writer who was disposed to advocate his cause occasion for total confusion. To my notion there is nothing more pernicious than these slovenly transitions and alterations. A man should know what he wills and stand by it: if he alters his position, he must do so officially. Otherwise all is confusion. By the help of an anachronism a newspaper writer shows up a man to his advantage by the help of the fact that he had blundered . Onc lets it seem as though it were not at a different time he had said this, one treats the latter saying as though it were the contemporaneous interpretation; and 10, the man who precisely by his duplicity characterizes himself as unstable becomes a hero and perfectly consistent - the State and the State-Church on the other hand are put to embarrassment. But Magister Adler has never solemnly (which by reason of the relation of the spheres calls for repentance) revoked what he most solemnly had said . On the contrary, he has let the first affirmation stand, and then in a gossipy way said this or that as it were about it not being something new, that neither was it quite a revelation, but something in some way remarkable, and such like. (But about this later in its proper place.) But in respect to ambiguous phenomena one cannot too often oppose the ambiguity, which precisely when it is not held together is calculated to confuse.
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really to wish to make a fool of the Establishment, as though it were something so abstract that it was not able to concentrate itself in an energetic consciousness of what it is and what it wills.
To wish to be in the service of the Establishment, and then to wish to perform a service which aims precisely at the life of the Establishment, is just as unreasonable as if one were to wish to be in the service of a man, and yet to admit openly that his labor and zeal were to serve this man's enemy. This no man would put up with, and the reason why one thinks that the Establishment might put up with it is that one has a fantastic abstract conception of the impersonal character of the public and a fantastic notion of the public as a means of livelihood, in consequence of which the public is supposed to take care of every theological candidate. When the army stands drawn up with its front facing the Establishment, then to wish to be in the ranks and a stipendiarius, but to wish to take the inverse position, is a thing that cannot be done. The moment the march is to begin (as soon as life begins to stir) it will be evident that one is marching in the opposite direction. The extraordinarius has therefore to step out of the ranks. This is required as well for his high importance as for the seriousness of the universal; for an extraordinary man is too important to take his place in the ranks, and the seriousness of the universal requires unanimity and unity in the ranks, it needs to see who the extraordinary is, or to see that he is the extraordinary. In this discrimen precisely shall the extraordinary acquire his competence: on the one hand the lowly one, a man all but lost, due to the fact of being pointed out as the individual in the peculiar sense, of being pointed out as a poor Peer Eriksen in comparison with the universal, so that no shrewd man dare be his friend or even walk with him in the street, so that his friend, if he were shrewd, would swear that he did not know the man, so that "they that passed by wagged their heads" (Matt. 27:39)
and yet to be the man from whom
-
something new shall issue. This is the painful crisis, but it never will be easy to become an extraordinarius. *
*The long passage which follows, containing r 3 paragraphs, is found in Papirer V I I I E, pp. 6 rff. S.K. wrote it as a "supplement" to this book. The translator can find no place for it more appropriate than this.
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So Magister Adler's collision with the universal is that of the special individual, with a revelation. Without wishing to deny straightway the possibility that this extraordinary experience might also occur to a man in our age, it certainly would be a very suspicious sign. But, if there is nothing new under the sun, neither is there any direct and monotonous repetition, there is constantly something newish or a new modification. Our age is the age of reflection and intelligence, hence it may very well be assumed that he who in our age is thus called of God would be en rapport with his age. He would then have at his disposition as a serviceable factor an eminent power of reflection. So this would be the difference: in olden times the man thus called would be the immediate instrument; in our age he would have as a serviceable factor this eminent reflection before which this lowly serviceable critic is obliged to bow. The man chosen in our age will be not merely an instrument in the immediate sense but wi!l consciously undertake his calling in a sense different from that which has always characterized a divine calling: he will think of himself and understand himself in the fact that this extraordinary thing has happened to him.
How far it may be possible to conceive of a divine call within a human reflection, as a coefficient of it, I as a lowly serviceable critic am not bold enough to say; the answer would first be con tained in the life of the extraordinary man, if such a one were to come. But to a certain point I can carry out the thought dialectically until reflection runs aground.
In case everything was in order about a man being called of God by a revelation, but he has as a serviceable factor an eminent reflection, he would then understand that to this call and to the fact of having a revelation there corresponds ethically a prodigious responsibility in all directions, not only inwardly (that he was sure within himself and understood himself in the fact that something extraordinary had happened to him, for that we can assume), but outwardly, in relation to the established order, because the extraordinary has in reflection the dialectic of being the highest salvation, but also of being able to be the greatest corruption. His responsibility in reflection would then be that he might not become the greatest misfortune to the established order, but might make everything as easy as possible
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for it, and that with fear and trembling he might watch out that no one, so far as lay in his power, should suffer harm by a direct relationship to his extraordinarity. In case he now let the serviceable reflection follow its own counsel alone, the ultimate consequence would be that he completely annihilated himself, annihilated the impression of himself, humanly understood, made himself as lowly, as insignificant as possible, almost odious, because in reflection, where every definition is dialectic, he rightly understood that the extraordinary, except at the point where it is and is in truth the extraordinary, is and may be the cause of the most frightful corruption. In the ultimate consequence of reflection he would then transform the fact of revelation into his life's deepest secret, which in the silence of the grave remained the law of his existence, but which he never communicated directly. - But, behold, just this would be to fail entirely to accomplish his task, it would be indeed disobedience to God. For he who is called by a revelation is called precisely to appeal to his revelation, he must precisely exert authority in the strength of the fact that he was called by a revelation. In a revival it is not assumed that the man awakened in an extraordinary way should go out and proclaim this to men; on the contrary, this may remain precisely the secret of the awakened man with God, it may precisely be humble to keep silence about this in a womanly way. But he who is called by a revelation and to communicate a revelation, or the fact that he had a revelation (for the principal thing is precisely that he has had a revelation, not always so much its contents - as with regard to a letter from heaven, if you will imagine such a thing, precisely the most important point is the fact that it has fallen from heaven, not always so much what is in it), he should proclaim this, appeal to it, exert authority.
So it is to be seen that when the fact of having had a revelation is transposed completely into reflection, this fact of having had a revelation must in one way or another come to be altogether impenetrable, or else work itself into a contradiction. For if the idea of the serviceable reflection conquers, a man will keep the very fact of revelation isolated and hidden, watching out with fear and trembling for the ruinous consequences which the direct communication might have, and shuddering at the responsibility. But therewith at the same time he gives up authority; he
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makes himself presumptuously into a genius, whereas God had called him to be an apostle. That is to say: in the idea of reflection a genius is the highest, an apostle is an impossibility; for the idea of an apostle is precisely the divine authority.
So reflection is brought to a standstill before the problem whether it is possible that human reflection is capable of understanding a call by revelation, whether one revelation does not imply continuous revelation. But on the other hand, since our age is the age of reflection and the human race may be assumed to be more and more developing in reflection, it seems after all self-evident that, if in such an age a man is called by a revelation, he must have in him an element of reflection more than the man thus called in an earlier age, who belonged to an earlier formation. In earlier times the reflection required of a man that was called signified only reflection within himself, understanding himself in the experience of the extraordinary thing that had happened to him; now it must signify reflection upon his whole relation to the environment, so that at the moment of undertaking his calling he must be able consciously to take account of his responsibility and also to take account of what would befall him as it befell the elect of an earlier time. He who in our age is called by a revelation must unite in his own person the fact of being the greatest maieutic of his age and the fact of being called, the fact of being called and the fact of being devoted (in the Latin sense of the word); in addition to the divine authority granted to him (which is the qualitatively decisive point) he must have an eminent wisdom to survey the circumstances of his life.
Farther human dialectic cannot go than up to the admission that it cannot think this thing, but also up to the admission that from this there follows nothing more than that it cannot be thought. But human dialectic, if it will understand itself and so be humble, never forgets that man's thoughts are not God's thoughts, that all the talk about genius and culture and reflection has nothing to do with the case, but that the divine authority is the decisive thing, that the man God has called, be he fisherman or shoemaker, is an apostle - for nowadays it is perhaps all too easy to understand that Peter was an apostle, but in those days people found it far easier to understand that he was a fisherman.
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The divine authority is the category, and here quite rightly the sign of it is: the possibility oJ oJlense. For a genius may very well at one time or another in the course of 50 or 100 years cause aesthetically a shock, but never ethically can he cause an offense, for the offense is that a man possesses divine authority.
But with respect to this determining factor of being called by a revelation, as indeed with respect to everything Christian, indolence and custom and dullness and thoughtlessness have taken the liberty of loosening the "springs" [i.e. the primal forces J. Now it was an hysterical woman who got a revelation, now it was a sedentary professionist, now it was a professor who became so profound that he almost could say that he had had a revelation, now it was a squinting genius who squinted so deeply that he almost was near to having, and so good as had had, a revelation. This afterwards became pretty much what one understood by being called by a revelation, and so in a sense Paul too had a revelation, only that in addition he had an unusually good head.
No, the divine authority is the category. Here there is little or nothing at all for a Privatdocent or a licentiate or a paragraphswallower to do - as little as a young girl needs the barber to remove her beard, and as little as a bald man needs theJriseur to
"accommodate" his hair, just so little is the assistance of these gentlemen needed. The question is quite simple: Will you obey?
or will you not obey? Will you bow in faith before his divine authority? Or will you be offended? Or will you perhaps take no side? Beware! this also is offense.
But, as has been said, people have loosened the springs, or have weakened their tension in and through the parenthetical.
Exegesis was the first parenthesis. Exegesis was busy about determining how this revelation was to be conceived, whether it was an inward factor, perhaps a sort of Dichtung und Wahrheit, etc., etc. Strangely enough, Paul, whom this question concerned most closely, seems not to have spent a single instant in wanting to conceive in this sense; but we others - well, we are not Paul, and so we must do something, for to obey him is not doing anything. Now, as a matter of course, from generation to generation, in every university, in every semester, there is a course about how, etc., etc. Yea, that is an excellent means of 134
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diversion. In that way we are diverted farther and farther from the task of obeying Paul.
Philosophy, and with that the theology which caricatures philosophy, was the second parenthesis. It said, as becomes a noble, high-born human science, "In no way shall I enter pettily into the question, with which I shall not allow myself to be disturbed, who was the author of a particular book of Scripture, whether he was only a fisherman or a lowly person of some sort.
No, away with all pettiness! The content of the doctrine is the main thing, I inquire only about that. As little as an aesthetic critic inquires who was the author of a play but only how it is,just as indifferent is it to me who the author was" - just as indifferent also whether it was "the Apostle, " a man with divine authority, which precisely is the knot. In this way one can easily be done with Paul without even beginning with him, or beginning with the fact that he possessed divine authority. People treat the Scriptures so scientifically that they might quite as well be anonymous writings.
Behold, from the moment the parenthetical got going there naturally was plenty to do for Privatdocents and licentiates and paragraph-swallowers and squinters; afterwards, as more and more work was done in this direction, things went more and more backward for the category of being called by a revelation; it became an insignificance, a matter of indifference, with which finally every man could compete; and then it went so entirely out of fashion that in the last resort it became a great rarity to see anybody in the "equipage."
So Magister Adler proclaimed that he had had a revelation, and thus came into collision with the State-Church. Since our age is an age of movement which would bring something new to birth, it must often experience this collision between the universal and the individual, a collision which may always have difficulty enough in itself but sometimes has a difficulty which does not lie in the collision itself but in the colliding parties. In case, for example, the individual in the peculiar sense loves the universal, thinks lowly of himself in comparison with the universal, shudders with fear and trembling at the thought of being in error, then he will make everything as good and easy as possible for the universal. And this conduct is a sign that it might be
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'35
possible after all that he was a real extraordinarius. But in case the individual does not love the universal, does not honor the established order (as one may well do in spite of the fact that he has something new to contribute), in case he is not perhaps in his inward man agreed within himself as to what he is, but only dabbles at being the extraordinary, is only experimenting to see whether it pays well to be that - then will he, partly knowingly (chicanery), make everything as difficult as possible for the established order; partly he does it, without being quite conscious of what he does, because at bottom he cannot do without the established order, and therefore clings to it, seeks to shift the burden of responsibility from himself upon the established order, seeks like a clever advocate to get the public to do what he himself ought to do. When an individual gets the idea that he must separate himself from another man with whom he is living in the closest relationship, in case he himself is certainly and decisively resolved, in this case the painful operation of separation becomes easier. But in case he is uncertain, unresolved, so that he wishes it indeed but has not quite the courage to venture it, in case he is a cunning chap who wishes to shift the responsibility from himself but to steal the reward of the extraordinary - then the separation becomes a tiresome story, and for a long time remains a painful, grievous, vexatious relationship.
Let us suppose that a theological candidate in our time had adopted the notion that the oath of office is unjustifiable. Well then, he can say this freely and openly, if he thinks it expedient.
"But by this he will close the road to advancement, and perhaps not accomplish anything, not even arouse a sensation, for a candidate is far too small an entity, and moreover he has no monopoly on the State-Church, since he has no official position." So (now I will think of a selfish man who not only does not love the Establishment but at bottom is an enemy of it) what can he do? He keeps silent for the time being; then he seeks a position as teacher in the State-Church; he gets it; he takes the oath. So now he is an office-bearer in the State-Church. Thereupon he publishes a book wherein he sets forth a revolutionary view. The whole situation is now changed. It would have been easy for the State-Church to bounce a theological candidate,
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easy to say to him, Very well then, having these views, you cannot become an office-bearer - and the State-Church would not have had to take any action at all with regard to this case, at the very most it would have to take a preventive measure against him quite particularly by not promoting him. But the theological candidate was shrewd and shrewdly understood how to make himself far more important. The responsibility which he as a candidate would have to assume for his peculiar view and would have bought dearly by sacrificing his future in the service of a higher call, while seeking to make the affair as easy as possible for the Establishment - this responsibility is now devolved upon the State-Church, which is required to take positive action to deprive of his office a man who by having become an office-bearer has at the same time made an attempt to interest the whole body of office-bearers in his fate. In this way such a revolutionary who is an enemy of the established order (which one need not be to be a reformer, and which a true reformer never is) seeks in cowardly fashion to give the universal as much trouble as he can.
For however conscious the State or the State-Church may be that it is in the truth and has the right on its side, and also that it is sound enough in health to excise such an individual without fearing that many might be harmed by it, yet it never can be expedient for the State-Church to have its first principles too frequently made the subject of discussion. Every living being, every existence, has its hidden life in the root from which the lifeforce proceeds and produces growth. It is well enough known to physiologists that nothing is more injurious to digestion than constant reflection upon digestion. And so it is also with relation to the spiritual life the most injurious thing when reflection, as it too often does, goes amiss and instead of being used to advantage brings the concealed labor of the hidden life out into the open and attacks the fundamental principles themselves. In case a marriage were to reflect upon the reality of marriage, it would become eo ipso a pretty poor marriage; for the powers that ought to be employed for the realization of the tasks of married life are employed by reflection to eat away the foundation. In case a man who has chosen a definite position in life were to reflect constantly whether this position were the right one, he would become eo ipso a sorry partner in business. Therefore, even
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though the State or the State-Church is sound enough in health to separate from it the revolutionary member, it is nevertheless deleterious that this gives rise to reflection. To everything hidden and concealed applies the saying of the ballad: "Merely one word thou hast uttered." It is easy enough to utter such a fateful word, but it is incalculable what harm may be occasioned by it, and a giant will be needed to stop the injurious effect of one word such as Peer Ruus let out in his sleep. And if the State or the State-Church must often suspend many such individuals, then at last an appearance is conjured up as though the State itself is in suspenso. The appearance of being in suspense always results when one does not rest upon the foundation but the foundation itself is made dialectical.
Such a situation may easily become dangerous for the State, principally because this sort of discussion is especially tempting to all insignificant pates, to all gossipy persons, to all empty blown-up bladders, and so more especially to the public. For the more concrete a subject is about which one is to think and express an opinion, the quicker and the more clearly will it be shown whether the speaker has the qualifications to take part in the discussion or not. But the prodigious problems - that really is something ... for the mos t insignificant twaddlers! * It is perhaps not beside the point to remind people of this, for our age, the age of movement, tends to bring fundamental assumptions under discussion, so that the consequence is that a marvelous number of men in the mass get on their feet and open their mouths all at once in the game of discussion, along with the public which understands absolutely nothing about it, whereas the prodigious size of the problem advantageously hides the ignorance of the discussers and the speakers respectively. In case a teacher wants to favor a know-nothing of a pupil, he can do it
*The prodigious problems from which the most eminent thinkers will shrink beckon to all insignificant pates as the task for them, and so foolish men m ake use of such opportunity to come forward and take part in the discussion. There even comes about a certain equality, for he who perhaps is eminently equipped by nature and has spent the best years of his life thinking over such matters admits that he dare not decide anything, and the most insignificant chatterer "ex presses himself" in about the same way - so both are equally knowing.
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in various ways, but among others he can do it by assigning to him such a prodigious problem that the examiners can infer nothing whatever from the triviality of his reply, because the immense magnitude of the subject deprives them of any standard of judgment. Perhaps I can illuminate this by an example from the world of learning. A learned twaddler who at bottom knows nothing can seldom be got to deal with anything concrete; he does not talk of a particular dialogue of Plato, that is too little for him - also it might become apparent that he had not read it.
No, he talks about Plato as a whole, or even perhaps of Greek philosophy as a whole, but especially about the wisdom of the Indians and the Chinese. This Greek philosophy as a whole, the profundity of Oriental philosophy as a whole, is the prodigiously great, the boundless, which advantageously hides his ignorance.
So also it is much easier to talk about an alteration in the form of government than to discuss a very little concrete problem like sewing a pair of shoes; and the injustice towards the few capable men lies in the fact that by reason of the prodigious greatness of the problem they are apparently on a par with every Peer, who
"also speaks out." So it is much easier for a dunce to criticize our Lord than to judge the handiwork of an apprentice in a shop, yea, than to judge a sulphur match. For if only the problem is concrete, he will, it is to be hoped, soon betray how stupid he is.
But our Lord and His governance of the world is something so prodigiously great that in a certain giddy abstract sense the most foolish man takes part in gossiping about it as well as the wisest man, because no one understands it.
Perhaps the sophistical is all too characteristic of our age, for the fact that we bring into discussion the greatest problems in order to encourage men who are the most insignificant and devoid of any thought to take part in the discussion. Let us not forget that noble reformer, that simple wise man of Greece, who had in fact to deal with Sophists, let us not forget that his strength lay in chasing the Sophists out of their roguish game with the abstract and the all-embracing, that his strength lay in making conversation so concrete that everyone who talked with him and who wanted to talk about some prodigious subject (the government of the State in general, about educational theory in general, etc.) before he knew how to put in a word was led to talk
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about himself�- revealing whether he knew something, or didn't know anything.
But, back again to the theological candidate. Perhaps one might say, "But it is hard 011 a man to require him to shut the door upon his future prospects, so that he has no hope left, which he yet might have had if after he had been inducted he had been deposed - the hope of getting his pension." Yes, certainly it is hard, but it also will be hard to be an extraordinarius. Yes, it will be so hard that no one, if he understands it, could wish to be such a one; although he who is that in truth will surely in his relationship with God find comfort and satisfaction and blessedness. For the true extraordinarius will not be comforted nor seek relief nor find relief in the public, but only in God; and therein consists the dialectical, which is anguish and crisis but at the same time blessedness.
On the other hand, when an age becomes characterless it is possible that one or another individual may show symptoms of wishing to be an extraordinary; but he has no natural disposition for it, and therefore he wants the public to help him to it, he wants the public, the established order, to join forces with him to let him become an extraordinarius. How preposterous! It is precisely the extraordinary who is to introduce the new point of departure, in relation to the established order he is as one whose feet stand outside and will carry the old away - and then it is the established order itself that should be helpful to him! No, the universal precisely must hold him up tight; and if the established order does not do this, then there is developed here again something sophistical like that of the discussion of prodigious problems, so that it becomes the easiest thing in the world to become an extraordinarius, something every botcher aspires to, something for all those who otherwise are not capable of anything. There are epigrams enough in our age which the age itself produces without understanding them or heeding them.
Let us not forget that nowadays a martyr, a reformer, is a man who smells of perfume, a man who sits at table with garlands in his hair, and perhaps with guests, a man who has all his goods in gilt-edged securities, a man who really never risks anything and yet wins all, even the title of reformer, his glorious title. But when the established order does not hold the reins tight, then finally
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every man who will not obey becomes a reformer. When the father becomes weak, when the family life is stirred by a rebellious reflection, then the naughty children easily confuse themselves with a sort of reformer. When the schoolmaster loses the reins, then it is very easy for a pert pupil to regard himself as a kind of reformer. In our age therefore it has indeed gone so far that it really requires no courage to defy the King, to vex and disturb the government of the State; but indeed it requires no little courage to say a word to the opposition, even down to the triumphators of the mob, courage ... to talk against the reformers.
So he was a clergyman - and then for the first time occurred the event which might put him in the position of the special individual extra ordinem. There is the collision. For it is easy to see that Adler was so situated; and only for the sake of greater clarity shall I indicate very briefly the dialectical relationship between (a) the universal, (b) the individual, and (c) the special individual, that is, the extraordinary. When the individual merely reproduces in his life the established order (of course with variations in accordance with the powers and faculties he possesses and his capacity), then he stands related to the established order as the normal individual, as the regular individual; he displays the life of the universal in his existence; the established order is for him the basis which educationally permeates and develops his faculties in likeness with itself; he is related as the individual whose life is inflected in accordance with the established order as its paradigm. However, let us not forget (for discontented and evilminded men are ready to spread false rumors) that his life is not for this cause spiritless and insipid. He is not just one of the patter of words in the glossary which follow the paradigm. No, he is free and essentially independent, and to be such a regular individual is as a rule the highest, but also the qualitatively significant, task which therefore is assigned to every man. On the other hand, so soon as the individual lets his reflection grasp so deep that he wants to reflect upon the fundamental presuppositions of the established order - then he is by way of intending to want to be a special individual, and so long as he thus reflects he refuses to follow the impressa vestigia of the established order, he is extra ordinem, on his own responsibility and at his own risk. And when the individual continues in such a path and goes so far that he no T H E H I S T O R I CAL S I T U AT I O N
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longer is the regular individual reproductively renewing in himself the life oJ the established order though willing, under eternal responsibility, to take his place therein, but wills to renew the life oJ the established order by introducing a new point oJ departure for it, a point of departure which is new in comparison with the Jundamental presuppositions of the established order, then by classifying himself immediately under God he must relate himself to the established order as refashioning it - then he is the extraordinarius, that is to say, this place is to be assigned to him whether he has a right to it or no. Here he must conquer and face his judgment - but the universal must decisively exclude him.
It is important here especially, as indeed everywhere it is, that the qualitative dialectic be respected with ethical seriousness.
For in an age which lacks character the sophistical situation may arise where one who intends to be an extraordinary wants this intention to be profitable to him in the service of the universal, so that because of this he may become an uncommon figure among ordinary men. Unhappy confusion which has its ground in the thoughtless and frivolous tendency to judge quantitatively! A man must either wish to serve the universal, the established order, expressing this in his life, and in this case his merit will be measured by the faithfulness and punctuality with which he knows how to subordinate himself to the universal, knows how to make his life a beautiful and rich and faithful reproduction of the established order by forming himself to be a type of it - or else he must be seriously the extraordinary, and so, as extra ordinem, he must get out of the files, the ranks, where he does not belong. But in our age everything is confused. A discontented office-bearer, for example, wants to be something extraordinary - and at the same time discontented. A sorry, immoral confusion! If he is discontented, if he has something new from God to bring us -
then, out of the ranks! "with a halter about his neck"; and then let him speak out, for then the situation is such as a true extraordinarius needs and must demand in order to be able to gesticulate and start up the music. But if he hasn't anything new from God to bring us, it shall by no means be to his advantage that he is discontented - and at the same time an office-bearer.
But the characterlessness and pert indolence of this age comes at last to regard it as a kind of disgraceful narrow-mindedness to be
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anything out and out: either an office-bearer faithful in body and soul; or a reformer with the sword hanging over his head, in mortal danger, in self-denial.
What makes this difference between the ordinary individual and the special individual is the starting-point. Apart from this it may well be that an ordinary individual is, humanly speaking, greater than a real extraordinarius. The final measure according to which men are ranked is the ethical, in relation to which the differences are infinitesimal; but conversely the worldly mind lets the differences determine the rank. Let us take an example of what here is called the ordinary individual, and let us be right glad that we have an example to which we can point, let us mention honoris causa, but also to illuminate this situation, the much admired Bishop of Zeeland
and here everyone may well
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express admiration, for to admire him who expresses the universal is a glad privilege, for from him one can learn. Bishop M ynster does not possess in the very least the marks which characterize what one might call in the strictest sense the special individual. On the contrary, with lofty calm, reposing gladly in his convictions as the abundant content of an abundant life, with the admonishing emphasis, with the sober discretion of seriousness, though not without a noble little turn of expressions directed against confused pates, this man has always acknowledged that it was nothing new he had to bring, that on the contrary it was the old and well known; he never has shaken the pillars of the established order, on the contrary he has himself stood unshaken as a foundation pillar. And when he looks over the first edition of his earliest sermons he "finds nothing essential to change" (as though perhaps since that time he had been so fortunate as to run across one or another freshly arrived systematic novelty); and when the time comes that on his deathbed he reviews all his sermons, not for a new edition but as a testimony, he presumably will find "nothing essential to change. " No, it was all the old and well known which in him
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nevertheless found a spring so fresh and so refreshing, an expression so noble, so beautiful and so rich that during a long life he profoundly moved many and after his death he will continue to move many. Yea, verily, in case a doctrine once at its very beginning may wish for an apostle who in the strictest, in a TH E H I S TO R I CAL S I TUATIO N
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paradoxical sense is an extraordinarius, standing outside the ranks
- ah, but then will the same doctrine in a later time wish for such householders who will have nothing new to bring out of their treasures, who on the contrary seriously find pleasure only in themselves expressing the universal and find pleasure in marching together in the ranks and teaching the rest of us to mark time. But is it not insulting to the right reverend man to sit and write anything like this? In case what has been said here is true, Bishop Mynster is indeed no great man, he has never indeed followed with the times, he does eot know indeed what the age requires, still less was he able to invent it. No, he has invented nothing. Whether perhaps he might have been able to do it (he who nevertheless as a sharp-sighted psychologist knows human folly thoroughly, and also is in possession of the key to the great storehouse where the requirements of the age are piled up) I shall not venture to decide, but certain it is that he has invented nothing.*
So the new starting-point was the difference between the true ordinary and the true extraordinary individual. They both have in common the essential human measuring-rod, the ethical.
When, then, the individual is the true extraordinarius and really has a new starting-point, when he understands his life's pressing difficulty in the discrimen between the universal and the individually extra ordinem, he must be unconditionally recognized for the fact that he is willing to make sacrifices. And for this he must be willingjor his own sake and for the sake of the universal.
*The translator remarks that S.K. gave no sign that he might wish to suppress this eloquent panegyric or to alter it in any important respect. Evidently he was glad to seize the opportunity of uttering it, and doubtless at the end of his l ife he was glad he had done so, he "found nothing essential to change." H is youthful enthusiasm for his Bishop had long since grown cold, but here he says all he could truthfully say in his praise. But he emphatically excludes the notion that M ynster was what he called a "special individual," and still more that he was, as Martensen called him, "a witness to the truth," which in S.K.'s vocabulary meant a martyr, one who suffered or was ready to suffer for the truth. That Bishop Mynster certainly was not. This utterance of Martensen's in his funeral oration ignited the conflagration, that is, prompted S .K. to launch out u pon his violent attack upon Mynstcr and the "established " Christianity which he represented . In the midst of that he di"d without regretting what he had said in praise of the deceased Bishop.
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Precisely because the extraordinarius, if he is that in truth, must by his God-relationship be aware summa summarum that KaTa ovvafLLv he is stronger than the established order, he has nothing at all to do with the concern whether he will now barely be victorious. No, from this concern he is entirely exempted; but on the other hand he has the terrible responsibility of the special individual for every step he takes, whether he now is following his order accurately in the smallest details, whether definitely, alone, and obediently he has heard God's voice - the dreadful responsibility in case he heard or had heard amiss. Precisely for this reason must he wish for himself all possible opposition from without, wish that the established order might have power to make his life a tentamen rigorosum, for this trial and its pain is yet nothing compared with the terror of responsibility, if he were or had been in error! In case, for example, a son should feel called to introduce a new view of the domestic life (and as a son is bound by filial piety, so shall or ought every individual be bound by piety towards the universal) - would he not then, if there was truth in him, wish precisely that the father might be the strong one who could encounter him with the full power of parental authority? For the son would not so much fear to get the worst of it, if he was in the wrong, so that humbled but saved he must return to the old ways, as he would shudder at the horror of being victorious if he were in the wrong.
Thus it is with the true extraordinarius: he is the most carefree man in comparison with the worldly man's temporal anxiety as to whether what he has to proclaim will be triumphant in the world; on the other hand he is as much in anguish as a poor sinner with a contrite heart whenever he thinks of his responsibility, whether in any way he might be mistaken; yea, for him it is as though his breathing were obstructed, so heavily weighs the weight of his responsibility upon him. Precisely for this reason does he wish for opposition - he the weak man - he the strong one who though a lone man is in his weakness KaTa ovvafLLv stronger than all the united powers of the established order, which of course has power to scourge him and put him to death as nothing. When the berserker rage came over our northern forebears they let themselves be pressed between shields: so also does the true extraordinarius wish that the power of the established
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order would put up a suitable resistance. In this case Magister Adler, if in truth he were the extraordinarius, might honestly be very glad of the fact that as the highest clerical authority in the Danish Church there stands such a man as Bishop M ynster, a man who, without being cruel or narrow-minded, by his own obedience has sternly disciplined himself with the strong emphasis or gravity of seriousness to dare to require of others the universal, a man of whom it may be said with the seriousness of a Cato that he ad majorum disciplinam institutus non ad huius seculi levitatem; a man who very well can join in the game if only a true extraordinarius is there. In this case too Magister Adler did not need (as in other cases might be necessary) to lend the established order a bit of his power in order that it might be able to put up a suitable opposition to him. But in any event the cause of the extraordinarius owes much to the firmness of such a man. A weaker man in that official position, a man who himself had some symptoms of wanting to be something of an extra ordinarius -
then perhaps Adler might not have been deposed, the situation not consistently and efficiently regulated, thus the whole affair would have become a meaningless and "remarkable something." A confused extraordinarius introducing the new, and a weak-kneed man of government, are to be sure a perfect match for one another, but only as Punch and Judy are. And perhaps the time may soon come to exhibit such a relationship. For if our age lacks the true extraordinarius, it lacks also those serious figures, those individuals disciplined in the highest sense, who precisely by self-discipline know how to hold others in check, and hence to educate genuine extraordinary figures; for it is not loose concepts, and it is not indefinite and shifting relationships which create the true extraordinarius, they only coddle and spoil him.
And possibly our age does not really need the true extraordinarius, but on the contrary those upright men who with God-fearing resignation conceive it as their task not to invent something new but with life and soul to be faithful to the established truth. But whether or no our age needs extraordinary figures, one thing is sure, that the extraordinary one is recognizable by the fact that he is willing to make sacrifices.
In our age the man of movement (the spurious extraordinarius) understands and takes the matter in hand differently. Perhaps it
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is after a thoroughly reasonable finite reflection upon the situation, the aim, etc., that a man reaches the result that he has a new proposal to make. From now on he is through with the inward direction of the mind in self-searching and with responsibility before God he has indeed already a result. He now takes
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up a position opposed to the established order, and the telos of his effort is that this proposal, this plan of his, must triumph. It is certain and sure that his plan is the true one. The problem and the labor is only to insure that it may be brought to victory.
One sees plainly that the situation of the true extraordinarius is the converse of this. He is concerned only about his instructions and his relationship to God, occupied alone with his subterranean labor in the mine to dig up the treasure, or to hear God's voice; he jokes lightheartedly about the question of being victorious in the world, for he knows well enough that, if only all is as it should be in his relationship with God, his idea will surely triumph, even though he fall. The true extraordinarius in this relationship with God is conscious of his heterogeneity with the temporal, and therefore in this spatium of heterogeneity he has room in which he can move in venturing for his cause, venturing life and blood. The man of movement has no eternal conviction, therefore in an eternal sense he can never be sure, neither is he busy alone about gaining the assurance: precisely for this reason he has no room and no time to venture anything especial. His cause is altogether homogeneous with the temporal, therefore not only is the telos of his effort that he shall triumph, but the Jaet that he triumphs shall at bottom convince the man of movement that he was in the right, that his proposal was true. The same men who constitute the established order he not only will need again but he has need of them, if only they will don a new uniform in correspondence with his plan. One easily sees how the dialectic of his effort must shape itself: he would upset the established order, and does not dare to give it a shove for fear of falling himself, for this would not only be a fatal circumstance, but at the same time, according to his own conceptions, be proof that he was in the wrong. Everything depends, as has been said, upon victory, not only because his plan will then be true, but also because his plan by being victorious may become true. He has no certainty, but acquires it only when he has triumphed;
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whereas the true extraordinarius possesses the heterogeneous certainty, the certainty of eternity, whether he falls or no.
To wish to move people in that way is essentially as if one were to offer to perform a trick - "if it succeeds" - and now for the sake of completeness would have his name included on the placard. He who would move anything must himself stand firm, but the man of movement has nothing firm about him, he is firm only when he is taken into custody [blevet fast] i.e. afterwards.
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He might therefore wish that the established order were weak and decrepit, in order that he might the more easily conquer. If such is not the case, then he must resort to every expedient to conquer, to cunning and wiliness, to handshaking, to conciliation, exclaiming as his trump card "the devil take me, " or a concessive "beg your pardon, " the reformer's behavior must be like his who seeks a position and runs errands all over the town, or like a huckster selling his vegetables on a busy Thursday he must stop and chaffer about the very plan itself, get it cluttered up by the help of committees, and above all there must be sent out a message to the public, with an exceedingly obliging and flattering invitation that a highly revered and cultured public will do the huckster - but what am I saying? - I mean the reformer, the honor of standing as godfather to the baby . . . and so at last this bungling triumphs * Such a man of movement is
*In these times one is busy solely and only about being victorious, one seems to live in the vain conceit that if only one can manage barely to conquer, it makes no difference about the means - as if the means were of no importance, whereas when there is any question of the situation in the world of spirit they are the determinant factor, or, more precisely expressed, the means and the victory are one and the same. Of course, in relation to money, titles, horses and carriages, torchlight processions and Hurrah boys, and other such like indecencies, i t is true that the means are of no account, that the means of acquisition are not the same as possession. So one can really come into possession of money -- in many shabby ways; one can really get a torchlight procession in one's honor and have attained it in many shabby ways. But in relation to spirit there are no such outward, palpable, indecent realities. The profound and elegant thing in relation to spirit is the fact that the mode of acquisition and the possession are one. Hence he who is not aware of this fact in the spiri tual sphere, but is blissful in the vain conceit of being victorious, in spite of the fact that the means were thoroughly paltry, does not notice with what elegance the profundity of the spirit makes sport of him for the fact that he has not really conquered but has wri tten a satire upon himself. Let us refer to the most dread and highest example: in case Jesus Christ did not conquer
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unable - unable even to venture - to stand alone as an individual and thereby find room to venture life and all; on the con trary he has need of the majority to be certified if it is true, if what he wants is any good. He wishes to move others, and at bottom he wants the others to hold on to him in order that he may stand firm. But then indeed there is no movement, for he stands firm only when the case is decided and the majority has won. So long as this is not decided (and this in fact is the period in which the movement should go on) he does not stand firm.
When one has the view of existence characteristic of the man of movement it can easily be seen that the reflection must develop to the point where it is regarded as ludicrous madness or stupidity that one should risk himself; and it may be reasonably conceded that from this point of view it does look so. But in requital the man of movement betakes himself, comically enough, to another point of view; the man of movement who does not stand firm at the moment when he ought to (i.e. so long as the cause is in the minority) but first stands firm when he doesn't need to; the man of movement who, strangely enough, thinks that the whole thing is due to him. All movement presupposes (as anybody will be convinced who thinks the dialectic of this situation) a point, a firm point outside. And so the true extraordinarius is the point outside, he stands upon the Archimedean point outside the world - a firm point extra ordinem
- et terram movebit. But he also has room to move when it comes to life and death and scourging and other such like, which surely by being crucified, but had conquered in the modern style by business methods and a dreadful use of His talking gear, so that none of the balloters could refuse Him their vote, with a cunning that could make people believe anything - i n case Christ h a d come in that way a n d was regarded a s t h e S o n of G o d , then He didn't come into the world at all, and Christ would not have been the Son of God. What would have triumphed would have been, not Christianity, but a parody of Christianity. To shrewd folks this may well seem a confounded nota bene that the spirit is not like money, that the scurvy fellow may shamelessly pride himself that he really came into possession of money ( "the unrighteous mammon" ) , really was victorious; but for every optimate it is an indescribably blessed comfort that there is after all one place where eternal righteousness prevails. In relation to spirit nothing can conquer in an accidental and outward way, but only in the essential way; but the essential way is neither more nor less than the reduplication of victory, since in the spiritual world the form is the reduplication of the con ten t.
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are of no help if one resolves to enter the majority, and could not conceivably happen to one who is in the majority. Whether the true extraordinarius prevails today or tomorrow or in a thousand years is a matter of no concern, for he has conquered, his relationship to God is his victory; yea, though what he has to proclaim were never to prevail in the world, to this he might reply, "All the worse for the world."
Behold, this attitude is the attitude of movement; but the
"man of movement " has nothing eternal, and therefore nothing firm, so as a consequence thereof he has not the courage to become the recognizable individual who wills something and will take risks for it. Essentially he does not act at all, in the outcry he makes a feigned sally, his activity culminates in shouting out something. As when children are at play and one of them suddenly shouts, "Why not play this game? " the man of movement shouts, "Why not do this now? " Thereupon when they have become many, when the majority is on their side and the cause is forced through - then the man of movement is for the first time really recognizable, for he goes about with New Year's congratulations and says, "I t was really I who stood at the head of the Movement and the New Direction." Sometimes it comes to pass that men behold with wonder several men going about with congratulations, each one of them saying, "It was really I who stood at the head of the Movement, etc." So it appears that there was not merely one but several men at the head. This comical confusion contains a deep truth, namely, that no one at all stood at the head, and therefore the one is as much justified as the other in going about with congratulations. A true extraordinarius who stood alone, forsaken, pointed out in the pillory of the special individual, a true extraordinarius who was recognizable by the fact that he was executed - well, it is a matter of course that after this he cannot very well go about with congratulations -
but neither can he be mistaken for another.
The man of movement might perhaps better be called a stirring-stick (muddler). Indeed this is the essential distinction between moving and stirring, that movement is in a forward direction, stirring is movement up and down or round about, like the rod in the butter-churn, like the foot of him who treads the peat, like rumor and gossip, like the stick in the hand of the
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kitchen-maid when she stirs in the muddling pot. Hence it is only an illusion when these men of movement scoff at the capable men, the unshakable, who do in truth stand still - meaning that they themselves are not standing still; for stirring is not movement, there is no muddling in a running river, but in still standing water, and neither is there in that when it lies still and deep. If what is said here is read by one or another, to some it will perhaps seem a horrible and inhuman demand upon the extraordinarius. Well, possibly; I can do nothing for it, that a modern age by becoming entirely earthly and worldly succeeds in forgetting what paganism understood.
In the dreadful responsibility which the true extraordinarius has to face (for he does not possess the result once for all, he has not become God's plenipotentiary once and for all) * is included also the concern lest his example when he assumes a position extra ordinem may beguile other men who are weak, lightminded, unsteadfast, inquisitive, to wish also to try their hand at something similar, so that his example may become a snare, a temptation for them. For with regard to the concern which torments busybodies and gadabouts to win several apes and several adherents who agree with him, to get a society founded which has his own seal - this concern the true extraordinarius does not know, in this respect he is entirely lighthearted and jocose.
But the dreadful thought that he might damage another man, that he might occasion any other man to try his hand lightmindedly at what involves the heaviest responsibility of the individual - this dreadful danger he conceives profoundly. In an age of movement like ours, where symptoms of wishing to be a bit extraordinary are an epidemic disease, one must especially, with fear and trembling, be mindful of his dreadful responsibility. He will therefore here again make his position as deterrent as possible for others, as little alluring and tempting as possible.
If only the lightminded see that a dose of seriousness is included in holding out for something, they soon fall away, yea, they even transform themselves into opposition to the extraordinarius. Light-
*This is also nonsense. A king may well nominate a highly trusted m inister once for all, in consideration of the fact that the minister is perhaps a considerably shrewder pate than the king, but God does not find h imself in such a position.
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mindedness would fain accept the extraordinarius as a playmate; when it observes that this is not feasible it unites against him all its childish wrath. But every extraordinarius owes it unconditionally to the established order that by one or another deeply considered step he first contrive if possible to make his extraordinary call seem repugnant, so that his example may not do harm, become a snare. A true extraordinarius in our age (since reflection and intelligence are so prodigiously developed) must be thoroughly acquainted with all possible known forms of dangers and difficulties. That a man in our age might receive a revelation cannot be absolutely denied, but the whole phenomenal demeanor of such an elect individual will be essentially different from that of all earlier examples who never encountered anything of the sort.
The true eXiraordinarius must have the presuppositions of his age constantly at his service, in a highly eminent degree he must have at his disposition that which is the conspicuous mark of our age: reflection and intelligence. The essential phenomenal difference between a man in our age to whom a revelation has been imparted, and a man in a previous age, is that the former undertakes this extraordinary task with a discretion developed to a high degree. Ours is a reflective age - it is unthinkable that the divine governance has not itself taken note of this fact. Now though a revelation is a paradoxical immediacy, yet if it should happen to anyone in our age, it must also be recognizable in him by the serviceable reflection with which he accepts it. His reflection must not overwhelm the extraordinary man, but he must have reflection to introduce it into the age.
Now it is indeed true that the affair of Adler had a highly unfortunate outcome, so that his example was thoroughly deterrent; but this is no credit to him, for in this respect he has done nothing to help the universal, and presumably he had not expected that the outcome would be so unfortunate, having even made arrangements to have the second edition come out promptly. Supposing now that he had come off brilliantly with getting himself a revelation, suppose this had been what the age demands, suppose it had been a success; and then suppose that owing to Magister Adler's example the universal was encumbered with a small voluntary battalion of hysterical women, of
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students and virtuosi who wouldn't take their professional examinations, item of certain droll crotcheteers who sit and spin out whimsical notions in a parsonage - who all had sought to renew their credit by getting themselves a revelation.
Now, purely dialectically with the help of imagination, I shall essay a little sketch which may show if possible what Magister Adler might have done, or I shall lift him altogether into the sphere of reflection. If he had been the true extraordinarius, then what he would have found it necessary to do was of course far more profound than a lowly serviceable critic can imagine. It would have been something more profound, and properly speaking profundity is the deep existential realization of an idea which corresponds directly with God. Nowadays it is thought splendid when anyone is so fortunate as to get a fancy, to make a profound remark, to put together in writing horis sucecivis something profound which every other hour he disavows existentially.
No, just as perseverance (in contrast with the flashy deception of the moment) is the true virtue, so profundity also is not exhibited in an utterance, a statement, but in a mode of existence.
Profundity is the pictorial and metaphorical expression which indicates how many feet a man existentially draws, in the same sense in which this is said of a ship. But a ship is said to draw so and so many feet of water, not in the sense in which feet are measured by the lead which is cast anywhere for a moment, but it is the decisive description of the ship's whole and daily existence, that it draws so and so much depth of water. Or to describe this in another way: the greater extent the telescope can be extended, the better it is, and so also, the greater extension a man has when he reaches the secrecy of his inmost life, just so many more feet does he draw in depth. Depth of mind is therefore the opposite of externality. A man who lives only externally has naturally a tendency to anticipate his future with great words, vows, etc.: the profound man is precisely the opposite, concealing the principal machinery by which he moves. He looks perhaps in daily use as if he were moving with one horsepower, and really the machinery is working at the highest power. *
*The following 5 paragraphs are taken from Papirer V I I I B 1 2 , pp. 55f. , omitting 4 footnotes ( V I I B 25 2 , 2-4, 9) .
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In order to illustrate the whole situation, allow me to give an example, purely imaginary, and constructed with poetic license.
For this I choose a genius raised to the power of reflection. But at the same time I shall make the situation as difficult as possible. He is a genius, but he did not know this from the beginning. Such a thing can very well be thought, and moreover it marks the difference between an immediate genius and a genius in reflection, for the latter needs a shock in order to become what was latent in him. So he has lived on without understanding himself, he has trained himself for the service of the state, he a clergyman.
Only now comes about the event which gives him the shock. At that very moment he understands himself as extraordinary, which, however, he views at the same time as his misery because henceforth he cannot take refuge in the universal. But, above all, with his eminent reflection he surveys the whole responsibility of his position.
Here then is his discrimen: either to take in vain his extraordinariness, regarding it as a glittering distinction, and so occasion irreparable confusion; or else, first and foremost, before he thinks of communicating the new view which has come into his mind, he sacrifices himself, and thus reconciles himself with the universal.
That he himself is willing to resign his office is the least part of this sacrifice, such an act of honesty will not satisfy him nor relieve his ethical anxiety.
Let us now begin. So it is assumed that something has happened to him which was extraordinary or by which he became extraordinary. From this moment his life has been sequestrated by a higher power. The question now is about the inwardness of the reflection with which he undertakes his task.
Reflection is the mediator, the help of which he must use first and foremost to render himself harmless.
Dialectically he will at once perceive that the extraordinary has the dangerous discrimen that what he is in truth may for the others become the greatest ruin. He will therefore at the same moment shut himself up in impenetrable silence, shut himself up against every other, lest any undialectic imprudence should corrupt the whole thing into gossip, but that the extraordinary may have time to settle on the leas in the pause of silence. "One does not sew a new piece of cloth in an old garment, nor put new wine into old
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wine-skins, lest the rent become worse and the wine-skins burst" and so it will come about when the absolutely new point of departure is by overhasty bustle bunglingly joined with the old, so that it only does harm. At the same moment reflection will also teach him silence, the silence in which he dedicates himself, as a mother consecrates herself to exist only for the sake of the child, the silence which prevents any communication with any other, in order not to communicate anything wrong or in a wrong way.
But, after all, this extraordinary thing must be communicated.
Silence must not mean the abortion of truth. But no impatience!
There is a neurasthenic trembling which because of shaking cannot hold anything nor pass anything on. Let us not be deceived by it. Everyone who knows what it is to be truly resolute, knows very well that one can hold out and hold fast to a resolution. A man may be so situated in life that he quietly said to himself before God, "The path I am following must lead me to the stake, " and in spite of that he goes forward step by step. But impatience says, "The sooner the better"; and the neurasthenic impatience says, almost at the border of despair, "If only it does not pass away again, if only the impulse in me does not disappear, so that to me might be applied the dreadful words, 'The children are come to birth, and there is not strength to bring forth' "
(Isaiah 3 7: 3). But after all it is dreadful to be in travail and bring forth wind. In case one with a sacred resolution has resolved to sacrifice his life, and with neurasthenic impatience goes ahead and throws his life away and is executed "the sooner the better, "
has he gained anything, or has he really kept his resolution? The thing is that reflection and time be not allowed to shake his resolution. But on the other hand there is a remedy different from the foolish one of letting it occur at once, today; and this remedy is faith, humility, daily consecration. *
*The necessary slowness is also a cross which the elect man has to bear with faith and humility. Let us mention the highest instance, from which we believers ought to learn. When the angel had announced to Mary that by the Spirit she should give birth to a child - no, this whole thing was a miracle, why then did this child need nine months like other children? 0 what a test for faith and humility! That this is the divine will, to need the slowness of time! Behold, this was the cross. But Mary was the humble believer; by faith and humility she came to herself, although everything was miraculous. She remained the same quiet, humble woman - sh� believed.
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So the extraordinary must be communicated, it must be introduced into the context of the established order; and the elect, the special individual, must receive the shock, the dreadful shock, by becoming the special individual, and therewith must pass the shock on. Dialectically we have here a duplex situation: that the shock be really a shock in the qualitatively dialectical sense; and on the other hand that the established order be spared as far as possible. As God is not a God of confusion, the elect is not called to make a confusion -- and then run away from it. He must love the established order and therefore be willing to sacrifice himself. As one with the utmost caution deals with nitrate of silver [hellstone was the abhorrent name for it] (not in order to make no use of it but to use it rightly), as one wraps it up in something so that no one may come in direct contact with it, so must he take care to consecrate himself as a special individual in order that no one by a direct relationship to him may be harmed. The man who is called is at the same time the man who is "devoted." For what in him, the true extraordinarius, is eternal truth, a divine gift of grace, in every other man, who stands only in a direct relation to the extraordinarius, it is coquetry, untruth, perdition.
When we go farther along this path there must lie here at this point the profound task which has been spoken of, that the man who is called must first make himself almost repulsive. For the extraordinary character of the gift of grace is in one respect like hellstone, in spite of the fact that in another respect it is the blessing of heaven. The special individual is not in a direct sense the extraordinarius, he becomes such only when there intervenes the thought that he is paradoxical; and this dialectical situation may be expressed by the fact that the special individual first makes himself repulsive, so that no one could wish to be like him or to be as he is. In this paill consists, among other things, the sacrifice of himself and the atonement he makes with the established order out of love towards it. The fact that inquisitive men and fools and windbags prefer something different in order to have something to run after and to imitate, that confused extraordinary men who abhor discipline and constraint would rather break loose with others as Jratres et sorores liberi spiritus the
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fact that they disdain restraint has nothing whatever to do with
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the case. A truly competent spokesman for the established order will judge differently. He will not deny the possibility that there may be something new to contribute, but neither will he deny that the aforementioned precaution is pretty nearly the greatest possible. *
But, now, how make oneself repulsive? Let us first recapitulate. The elect man has had a revelation, that stands fast; he has shut himself up within himself with this fact; not one word has betrayed anything, not a gesture, and neither is his silence obvious, for then he would betray something; no, he is entirely like other men, talks like other men about what is happening -
hence no one can see that he keeps silent. For one may keep silent in two ways: one may keep absolutely silent, but this silence is suspicious; or he may talk of every possible subject, thus it can occur to no one that he is keeping silent. And yet the extraordinary has come to pass, and there lives a man who with a life consecrated by a holy resolution is laboring in perfect silence. If God has graciously granted him his confidence (though he knows very well how hard it must be for God to have dealings with a lowly man, even though this lowly man is exerting himself with might and main), he will at least not insult God by treating his confidence as an idle tale and as town gossip, as something that must be bawled out. For there must be no impatience! But there is a neurasthenic cry, "Confess, confess! "
The neurasthenic impatience may have its ground in the fact that the individual lacks the power to bear, that he is like a broken jar, or that the individual has been frightened by a despairing dread, or has a sort of compulsion to penitence which would make up for lost time by instant confession and would in self-mortification expose himself to all possible ridicule. For there are religiously awakened individuals sq confused in their heads that they maltreat other men by getting them to ridicule them,
*The translator remarks that anyone who knows S . K . must recognize that this long passage about the right behavior for the true extra ordinarius represents the author's profound reflection upon the role he was preparing to play as "the special individual" (without revelations and "without authority" ) in opposition to " the established order." He did not need to "step out of the ranks," for in many entries in the Journal he congratulated himself that he had not become a priest.
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which is in intention just as tyrannous as when a tyrant maltreats men as slaves.
So how then is he to make himself repulsive? The extraordinarius, if he is the true one, must of course know in an eminent degree what I who am a lowly serviceable critic am not so badly informed of, namely, how thoroughly undermined our age is in a religious respect, while busy men hold general conventions about unimportant matters, and while the thunder of cannon call people together for amusement. * Since this is so, it must not be difficult to find in the demonic sphere the disreputable garment which might make him repulsive. And let us remember well the foregoing postulate: there is as yet in the whole world no man who knows any more what happened to the extra ordinarius than does the pen I hold in my hand or the inkstand into which I dip it but without drawing my thoughts from it.
Adler might perfectly well have resigned his office, have said that the whole thing of being a priest was a fleeting fancy, something he wanted to try out, and he might have seen to it that this was accepted as the authentic interpretation. All this while the compass by which he steers must of course be unalterable, not varying a line with respect to his inward direction, but by holy consecration he must be renewed day by day in the same resolution. Of course when one suffers from neurasthenic impotence it is easier to let it out - the sooner the better.
Thereupon Adler (for his absolute silence up to this moment gave him up to this moment absolute control of the situation) might perhaps have furnished a poetical account wherein he would have described a demon who knew the lack of religiousness and of Christianity in our age, who was sent by the devil to show what Christianity was and to scorn it, he who in his heart was not merely a pagan but a Mephistopheles. He became a priest and attained the triumph of scorn over men. Thereupon he resigned his office. All the better sort in the established order would be disgusted with such a repulsive thing, and it is precisely the better sort that should be protected against harm. Were it some bandit who found this situation glorious - well, a bandit i, lost anyhow.
* S . K . dwelt at this time near the great amusement park called Tivoli and could not but hear the goings on - especially the cannon.
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Naturally this method is slow. It is easier to bawl it out at once. * On the other hand, it is so dreadful to work thus silently, and in a certain sense to work against oneself Suppose one were to die in the meantime, and there was no one who knew a word about it. It is harrowing when Hamlet at the moment of death is almost in despair that the hidden life he had led with prodigious exertion in the service of the idea should be understood by no one, yea, that no one would know anything of it; but if Hamlet had become softened at death, he also would have talked in his lifetime, that is, let the whole thing go. There is a remedy for neurasthenic debility: it is faith, humility. The God who every day has been invoked with holy consecration, He indeed knows and so all is well. For the result no one is responsible.
So if Adler had made himself repulsive in this way and thereby assured himself that none of the better sort might be tempted by his example - yea, then could he, humbly before God, have beaten his breast and said, "Now the first thing has been done, the sacrifice has been offered to the universal - now I can begin.
Humanly speaking, I am weakened, I cannot become anything great in the eyes of men, now I can serve God."
Now let us recapitulate and see what Adler has done, and as a motto recall the words of Paul, "Let all things be done unto edification, " whether one speaks in tongues or prophesies. These words contain an exhortation to reflection and ethical responsibility, that no one should think tumultuously that it is a man's
* It is true enough that in his later books Adler has gone over to the principle of silence, but without letting this quanti tatively essential change make a decisive impression. Thereto add the fact that it comes rather late. God knows what he has to be silent about after having bawled out the highest thing he had, or rather more than he had , as he did from the beginning. There is something strangely feminine about Magister Adler. One can almost always count upon it that a girl when she is led into a great decision and at the decisive moment does the mad thing, then afterwards when she has changed and come at last into the right course, she will persuade herself that she has done that from the beginning. I n general Magister Adler may b e regarded a s a good example o f loquacity i n a dialectical sense, which is so common in our age. Onc dabbles in one thing after another, gives up one system of philosophy and, as it is said , "goes farther," but at no point comes to a serious indication why one gave up the old and why onc accepted the new, it never comes to a serious accounting with regard to the responsibility for thus changing oneself.
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task, not to speak of the elect, to be like the darling of the fairy queen.
Did Adler resign his office, to satisfy in that way the established order? No, he remained in office and made out as if nothing had happened, until the State-Church took several steps and then he tried to remain in office, though no one can blame him for all the chicanery which is usual in such circumstances.
Has he done anything to hinder, if possible to remedy, all the unfortunate consequences his example has had for the established order? No, nothing whatsoever. Without having understood himself, without, as it seems, having given the least thought to the difficult problems he set in motion by his assertion of a revelation, he incontinently burst in upon the established order with his alarming fact. It is the business of the special individual to know everything down to the minutest details that stand related to his difficult position; instead he has left it to the established order to interpret all these difficulties. Perhaps he was like that toll-clerk who wrote so that nobody could read, and considered it his business to write and the business of the tariff commission to read - so he thought it was his business to cast a firebrand into the established order, and its business to take care of the conseq uences. In a vacillating age when unfortunately the growing generation almost from childhood is initiated into all sorts of doubts, in a vacilla ting age when the few competent men find it hard enough to hold out and to defend the pathos of the holy and the venerable - in such an age to break out impetuously with an immaturity which stands in the closest and most fatal relation to the highest interests ... is, to put it in the mildest terms, the height of irresponsibility. That fortunately one can say of Adler that up to date he has done no special harm, is certainly no merit of his; it is due to the fact that he has been entirely ignored. And yet for all this he has done harm, for religiousness in our age is by no means so great and serious a thing that it is desirable for ridicule and lightmindedness to get hold of such a prize as Adler.
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The so-called fact if revelation itself as a phenomenon coordinated with the whole modern development.
The very thing which seems to give to Christendom and to its learned or eloquent defenders such extraordinary success, this very thing it is which in many ways holds back and hinders individuals from making a qualitative and essential decision, this very thing it is which in the end must play into the hands of the free-thinkers, this very thing is the so-much-talked-about eighteen hundred years, whether by them the question is removed to such a prodigious distance that the impression of decision or the decisive impression vanishes in the twilight of imagination, or whether we have the paralogistic argument of the eighteen hundred years to the truth of Christianity, by which glittering and triumphant proof the trust of Christianity is unfortunately undermined, since in that case it is true only as an hypothesis, is by this triumphant argumentation transformed from eternal truth into an hypothesis. How could it ever occur to an eternal truth to sink to the point of proving its truth by the fact that it has endured for so and so many years, sink to a paltry comradeship with lies and deceits - which also have endured for many centuries and do still endure; an eternal truth which from first to last is equally true, in its last instant not more true than in its first, so that it did not come into the world shamefaced and embarrassed because it had not yet the centuries to which it could appeal, then was not foolishly puffed up for having endured for so long a time. True, an hypothesis which was embarrassed at the beginning becomes pompous with the years, but in requital it may any instant be discarded. This paradoxical fact (the offence of the understanding, the object of faith) does not become more true after eighteen hundred years than it was the day it happened. The fact that the eternal once came into existence in time is not a something which has to be tested in time, not something which men are to test, but is the paradox by 1 60